While Mo Farah has been accused of precisely nothing, his association with Alberto Salazar – the coach accused of plying the Olympic 10,000m silver medallist Rupp with drugs – is awkward to say the least.

Throw in the added fact that Salazar works as a consultant for British Athletics, or that other British athletes invariably head over to the American’s coaching base in Oregon, and consensus would suggest that such an association is no longer viable.

Apparently it is, though. As long as you ignore the seven former athletes and colleagues believed to have gone to the Unites States Anti-Doping Agency over Salazar’s conduct; ignore the report from 2002 that appears to state that Rupp was taking testosterone at the age of just 16; ignore the medication allegedly prescribed to one athlete and then given to another; ignore that an investigation is right now being launched by anti-doping authorities on both sides of the Atlantic and it makes perfect sense that British Athletics should say there are “absolutely no concerns” over Salazar’s conduct and coaching methods.

Mo Farah's coach Alberto Salazar has been caught up in a doping row

Handily, you can also dismiss the fact that Salazar was coaching America’s double Olympic champion Mary Slaney a matter of weeks before she failed a drugs test in 1996 because British Athletics has given assurances it carried out its “due diligence process” before Farah joined his camp. In fact British Athletics remains adamant that the “safeguards and systems” surrounding their own athletes tick all the boxes that they require.

There is, of course, the tricky matter of those foreigners who have a habit of failing drugs tests or allegedly doping. Fear not, British Athletics says it “views the allegations made in regard of Salazar’s non-British athletes – with utmost seriousness”. That is a stroke of luck, then. Just another case of those chaps overseas causing trouble. As long as it does not affect Britain then that’s fine.

Well no, it isn’t. This is a case as close to the country’s biggest athletics star as possible – a case where the national governing body’s head of endurance spends months every year in the presence of Salazar, absorbing his methods to use with British athletes. No matter how much the powers protest, Britain is heavily involved in this episode.

But so what if it wasn’t? Occurring on the eve of one of Britain’s two Diamond League meetings, this scandal has cast an almighty shadow over proceedings this weekend.

Greg Rutherford, an Olympic champion who also happens to be an eloquent anti-drugs campaigner, on Saturday summed up the overwhelming feeling among athletes when he said: “Any time there is any form of drug scandal it’s very bad for the sport. You don’t want the general public thinking that you have to take drugs to win. I like cycling but a lot of people think that in cycling you have to take drugs to do well and I never want to see athletics go that way.”

Farah is correct when he says his name has been dragged through the mud in the past week. So, too, has whatever is left of athletics’ tattered reputation. For a few brief minutes today the double Olympic champion will be able to take solace in competitive running before he returns to fielding doping questions.

There are still tickets available by the way. Come along if you fancy it. And try your hardest to believe.